Le Batard leaving Herald

Bob Norman reported about a week ago that Herald Sports columnist Dan Le Batard is leaving the paper on a one year leave of absence as of May 15.

Read the internal Herald memo here.

Herald Censors its company man

The Miami Herald's star sports columnist, Dan Le Batard penned a column entitled "Dolphins' Cameron unlucky to the end" about the Miami Dolphins head coach, Cam Cameron, who was recently fired. It was posted to Herald.Com on the 3rd of January and contained the following paragraph:

And you'll have a hard time finding a leader anywhere in sports who was as unlucky this year as Cameron. Six three-point losses. Zach Thomas and Trent Green and Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams all injured in ridiculous ways so that he was eventually starting a United Nations huddle of a Mormon quarterback, Mexican receiver, Somoan fullback and some guy named Lekekekkkkerkker. And now Parcells happens to him.

Apparently Le Batard made a similar quip on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" where he often guest hosts. It drew some attention to the column and also complaints. The Herald promptly edited the item to read as follows:

And you'll have a hard time finding a leader anywhere in sports who was as unlucky this year as Cameron. Six three-point losses. Zach Thomas and Trent Green and Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams all injured in ridiculous ways. And now Parcells happens to him.

The original copy would have disappeared into the ether if not for the Google cache. See image below:

Click to enlarge

Not known at this point is whether the printed edition included the Mormon, Mexican and Samoan joke. Dan should know by now that the only minority group that is fair game is the Cuban exile community. He is a company man, after all.

Dan Le Batard, Company Man

Was reading through the transcript of a recent online Q&A with Dan Le Batard, the Herald sports columnist did and thought this exchange was interesting:

Q: Hey dan, is there any way you can get the Tuna hired as the Herald's Sports Editor? You can stay. But dude, those other guys? Can you feel the peolple's pain? Of course you can, and don't pretend you wouldn't clean house over their if given the chance. Question: Would you???

Mr. Pat., miami, florida 12/31/07

A: i'd be gone faster than randy mueller if the swaggering tuna was running our place......i'd put up our staff against any in the country with similar resources, and i'd tell you the truth on that if i thought we were flailing....we do a very good job with some serious limitations.....we're not as strong as we were a decade ago but nobody in this sick business is....the kc star is the only sports section i can think of as good as ours in our circulation range

Dan Le Batard 12/31/07

A couple of things to note, the Kansas City Star which Le Batard mentions is also a McClatchy newspaper. Also Le Batard recognizes the fact that the newspaper business in deep trouble. I think his sentiments are commendable but people don't grade their newspapers on a curve based on circulation and they also don't care what the limitations are. The Herald has a bunch of kids writing and editing the sports section. Kids, because they are cheap. At some point the circulation troubles of the paper are also contributed to by the lack of quality in the paper.